ONE OF THE GREAT.

Evening Star, Issue 25344, 28 November 1944, Page 4

ONE OF THE GREAT.

At fifty-three, Field-Marshal Sir Harold Alexander is the youngest Field-Mar-shal in the British Army, but none can'deny that the new honour which has been bestowal upon'him, and which is retrospective to one of the high-lights of an outstanding career—the fall of Rome—is fully deserved. No seeker of the limelight, Field-Marshal Alexander has shown himself possessed of a strategic genius that has not gone unobserved, and he has achieved results which have been increasingly acclaimed, placing him among the great military leaders of all time. With a wider scope now, that of Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean theatre, even greater things may be expected from him whose whole career has been military. He went through four years of fighting in Europe from 1914 to 1918. was wounded twice, decorated twice—the D.S.O. and the M.C.—and was five times mentioned in despatches. At the end of that war he was in command of a battalion, with the rank of lieutenant-col-onel. .After the war his paths were many and varied. In 1919 lie commanded a Landwehr of the Lettish army in the confused fighting in the IJaltic provinces. Subsequently, as brigade commander, he was attached to the British forces in India. Returning to England, lie was appointed commander of_ the British First Division, in 1938, and'held the position until Dunkirk, when he was the last man to leave the bloody beaches. There is a story told of a staff officer who said to him: " Sir, the .situation is catastrophic." "Sorry," replied this fighting Irish soldier. " I don't understand such big words." And he is reported as sitting down to' construct a sand castle. It was this calmness in crisis that gained for him the esteem of the men who served under him, which showed him to be, as the ' Daily Telegraph ' once iput it, " an undisputed captain." and which, eighteen months later, enabled him to obtain a magnilcent response from his tiny army retreating before vastly superior Japanese forces in the Burmese jungles. If his leadership in the Dunkirk retreat was good, in Burma it was superb, and the epic became one of history's " most brilliant retreats." When the curtain temporarily fell on the Burma operations he replied to a question: "Of course we shall take Burma'back. It's part of the British Empire." He might have hoped to be iii charge of the reconquest of that country, but there were greater things elsewhere. In August. 1942. he was sent to the Middle East as Com-mander-in-Chief in succession to General Sir Claude Auchinleck. Soon afterwards there was born the AlexanderMontgomery legend, when Field-Mar-shal Sir Bernard Montgomery was placed in command of the Eighth Army. This combination, faced with a great problem with Rommel almost at the gates of Cairo, proved one of the

finest this war has produced, and on October 23, 1942, at EI Alamein, it was responsible for'the beginning of the end of the German hold, in North Africa.

The new Field-Marshal has spoken little during his term as Commander-in-Chief. Italy, and then with an avoidance of frills and heroics. On May 11. 1943, when the Allied offensive was launched in Southern Italy, ho said that to the armies in Italy had been given the honour of striking the first blows in the final battles of liberation. "We are going to destroy the German army in Italy. In the weeks that followed he made the Allied positions in Italy safe for all time, though his forces wero never superior to the enemy's. This modem " Alexander the Great " has made history, and he has not yet finished.